Junior carnival moves will be more modest this year

Another outlet for artistic expression is being provided by the Belize Carnival Association in the form of its Summer Youth Camp. Association chairman Patrick Thompson says the kids will learn to make creative costumes which–this year–will be more modest than in the past.

Patrick Thompson, Chairman, Carnival Association
“What we are doing in this camp is to teach the young ones the stress that that band leaders go through in putting together these beautiful and elaborate costumes. We will be teaching them how to design, create, and make a costume of their own for this camp that we will be having.”

Stewart Krohn
“Now Patrick, a lot of parents, they watch Carnival every year and it seems to them and it seems to the average person in the street that sometimes things get a little overboard with the sexual suggestion in the carnival dancing, particularly in this current climate we have where there is a lot of people taking advantage of children sexually, where do we draw the line on this thing?”

Patrick Thompson
“With the carnival, you know that there are two different groups; we have the junior groups and the senior groups. Now, as the Chairman of the Carnival Association, myself, and the Association, we put it to the junior groups that the children should be covered fully. No explicit part of the body should be showing for the juniors since, as you said, we have this problem with the child molestation. We are doing this where the kids, their bodies will be clothed up fullest because we don’t know who’ll be on the side watch.”

Stewart Krohn
“How ‘bout the dancing?”

Patrick Thompson
“The dancing is another thing where we draw the line where we let the groups know that no, the children should not be doing no out of order moves like going on the ground and hibbing up, the things that the adults would do. Myself and other Association members, what we do is go around to the bands when they are practicing and what we do is monitor the moves they are doing. And if we see they are doing something that is not what we required for the junior band we let them know right there and then and we tell them if the band still come out with that kind of move they will be disqualified.”

The camp, for children ages five to fifteen, will be run in two sessions: July second through sixth and July sixteenth through twentieth. Classes run from eighty-thirty to eleven in the morning and the cost is twenty-five dollars per person for the week. For registration and information call Phillipa Duncan at 600-0600.